Re: Why don't we change to cdrtools ?

"jdd (kim2)" <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:

> Joerg Schilling a écrit :
>
> > The CDDL has been aproved as a free license by the OSI
>
> So, if I understand well, you say that your application can be
> included in openSUSE with the present licence without problem?
>
> So far, so good.
>
> openSUSE board or Project Director should then ask the Novell lawyers
> they opinion (if it's already done, give a link to the result), then
> we will see.

I personally have in theory no problems with letting lawyers check things
as long as their decisions are not based on false claims.

The cdrtools code has already been successfully reviewd in depth by the Sun 
legal department.

There is a problem when we try to match your demand with reality.
The software that was created by the cdrtools project is used by many other
projects, but this is (at least for three projects) done in a non-legal way.


It is unfortunately obvious that suse usually does not go the way you propose 
while integrating software.

-	Why did suse belive in the pointles claims from Mr. Bloch against
	the cdrtools but never make a legal review on cdrkit?
	Any legal verification would have immediately revealed that believing 
	in the 	Arguments from Mr. Bloch would make all Linux distros illegal 
	and made the GPL a non-free license.

-	Why does suse distribute the GNU vcdimager that is in obvious conflict
	with the Copyright law? GNU vcdimager is based on a Reed Solomon coder
	implementation that _never_ has been published under GPL and the author
	of the code did never give his permission to put this code under GPL.
	GNU vcdimager however claims that the code is under GPL.

	We offered several different ways to the vcdimager author on how to
	make his software legal. He rejected all of them.

	Conclusion: vcdimager is undistributable but suse happily distributes 
	it.

-	libcdio is also based on code from cdrtools. The code it is based on,
	was published under "GPLv2 _only_". The libcdio author first changed the 
	license from "GPLv2 _only_" to "GPLv2 or any later" without the 
	permission from the original author. Hhe later even changed the license
	to "GPLv3 or any later" without having the permission to do so.

-	there is another problem with libcdio: libcdio is under GPLv2 but
	it is usually called by LGPL code (e.g. from LGPL libraries the GNOME
	project). It is commonly agreed that calling GPL code from non-GPL code
	is most likely not permitted. 

	This is a problem that was detected by the Sun legal department and
	because of this problem, Sun did ummediately stop to distribute 
	libcdio and we did write a replacement library for GNUME that
	is based on an enhanced version of cdda2wav.
	


> This is the most important part.
>
> Ten you claim wodim infringe your licence. I beg you made a sue to the
> author? so we have to wait the jugement and act then accordingly.
>
> I don't see any other interest of the discussion. I'm not a lawyer,
> you are not, and even if you where only a juge can say what is true
> (and this is to be done in an international manner). All the rest is
> mere opinion.
>
> thanks for your great work, anyway.

If you like equal treatment, you should vote for the following:

-	Either Suse believes in the reults from the legal check from Sun 
	and starts distributing the original cdrtools as soon as possible....

-	.... or suse _immediately_ stops distributing VCDimager,
	libcdio and cdrkit. We then start a legal review with cdrtools
	and do not forward to the other projects before we agree
	on the results for cdrtools.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js@cs.tu-berlin.de                (uni)  
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